Saturday, April 28, 2012

6 Practical Everyday Uses for Your Gamecube

Ah, the Nintendo
Gamecube. Misunderstood and under-appreciated in it's day, and quickly
overshadowed by it's slightly more likeable younger brother Wii. This
was truly an entertaining system with a rather impressive catalog of
exclusives. I can't count the number of hours wasted playing games such
as Super Smash Bros. Melee, Resident Evil 4, and Zelda: Twilight
Princess.

Despite
it's excellent library, the Gamecube lived a rather short life and
enjoyed rather underwhelming sales. As a result, it died shortly after
the Wii was released. Many games initially slated for the Cube, such as
Super Paper Mario and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, also ended up getting
moved to the Wii in the interest of higher sales volumes. By 2007, the
system was left with a slow trickle of mediocre kids games and sports
titles, with Madden 08 being the last official title.

Considering
this, it doesn't look like there's much left to do aside from
aftermarket game shopping. Thanks to the efforts of many creative minds
within the Nintendo hacking scene, however, there's many unintended and
interesting uses for your obsolete console.

Today
I'm here to happily present to you 6 practical, everyday uses in which
the Gamecube can once again shine like it's mid-2001. Are you ready?

6.) Make it an artistic expression.

If
you have a good eye and some experience with vinyl dye, I strongly
encourage you to break out your old Cube and turn it into a colorful
creation derived from your own unique tastes. If you're good enough, you
could probably even start selling your works as art. Hell, I'd buy from
someone that could make a good enough two-tone black and white case for
mine.

5.) Gut it and make creative use of the case.

(credits to EMDF on DeviantArt for making a lunchbox!)

The
Gamecube has always jokingly been called a lunchbox, and I've
personally always thought about buying a broken one with the intent of
gutting the faulty hardware and turning it into one. Add in a gutted
Gameboy Player and you've got yourself a rather sturdy and fashionable
lunchbox with a built-in icepack.

It would also come in handy as a cup holder, a pencil sharpener (ports 1-4, anyone?), or a custom iPod speaker dock.

4.) Learn how to program for it's hardware!

Think
you're level-headed enough to write programs? Better yet, are you by
any chance interested in game programming? If you do, the Gamecube could
be a great start for you. At this point, it's very inexpensive to get a
working development setup. Unless you're plan on creating a high-budget
game with realistic graphics, the hardware should be able to run
whatever you throw at it. Just bear in mind, it only has 24MB of memory,
so you might have to be a little creative once in awhile. ;)

3.) Game hacking (may require 3rd party tools)

(credits to Tsukimaru on the Smash Boards for this awesome SSBM texture hack!)

I'm
not encouraging piracy here. This is written under the impression that
the reader has dumped his games and is using legal tools to modify them.

Depending
on the popularity of the game, there may be many tools available to
extract and modify the contents of one of your favorite games. From
textures to models to audio to any random bits of data understood by
foreign tools, it is your playground. Feel free to build as many
sandcastles as you'd like to.

Some
games also have rather nice built-in emulators. If you dump the rom of
your choice, you may very well be able to swap it out with a little bit
of research. ;)

2.) Turn it into a retro game depository (requires 3rd party tools)

The
Gamecube homebrew scene was at a slow, steady pace for many years.
Initially, it was rather difficult to run unsigned code on it's
hardware, as it required an original copy of PSO I+II, a BBA, and a
dedicated PC. It was much more costly to hack and more complex to
program for when compared to the likes of the Xbox or Dreamcast, which both had thriving homebrew scenes at the time.

Around
2008, however, it picked up quite a lot of steam, thanks in part to
it's younger brother's similar hardware. Before the days of the Twilight
hack and the Homebrew Channel, the only way to run unsigned code was
through running SD Media Launcher or Freeloader in NGC mode.While
Nintendo eventually blocked these tools from booting through firmware
updates, hackers found their way into the main part of the hardware as
they originally intended to.

As the Wii scene grew, the Gamecube got to jump on it's bandwagon and
enjoy a rebirth of sorts. In many instances, homebrew releases get
ported to both platforms. Today, the console enjoys a wide variety of
emulators: NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, and even Nintendo 64!

1.) Turn your Gamecube into an Ultra-Portable Media Center!

Thanks
to it's small form factor and it's networking and media card
compatibilities, the Gamecube is a rather nice choice for a UPMC. Thanks
to the team porting MediaPlayer CE over from the Wii and the past
efforts of those who retooled Gamecube Linux into a media-based OS, we
now have the ability to do much more with our systems than Nintendo had
originally intended.

It
would also be an inexpensive alternative for a more entertaining car
dashboard considering the vast array of 3rd party accessories geared
towards it's mobility. Imagine the cost of tracking down a small LCD
monitor, a Freeloader disc, a cigarette lighter AC adapter, and a Memory
Card -> SD Adapter.